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Wednesday, June 18, 2008

2003 Play Ball - Base set

Time to wrap up the Play Ball set so I can finally move on to the next Upper Deck set on my list. The set had two angles to reel in customers. The Retro nostalgia hook and the 'all painted base set' gimmick. Retro sets were on fire in 2003, especially after Topps206 hit the hobby like a ton of bricks. Art cards have also been wildly popular since Diamond Kings first hit Donruss packs, and an entire set of the suckers complete with paintings had just hit the market. This was Upper Deck's way of countering both the Topps Topps206 and Topps 205 sets as well as the Diamond Kings set with a product of their own. Each card in the set used a painting instead of a photo or photo badly doctored to look sort of like a painting. The paintings are all very well done too, they've got the same feel for the backgrounds as the original '41s while putting a little more details into the players' faces. Some of the original portraits looked pretty bland and generic, especially the ones where the full player was visible.

The mini card parallel set didn't copy the base card exactly, but added a new background. The basic backgrounds used are fluffy clouds, a stadium scene and abstract colors. Upper deck mixed these up pretty well on the cards and made the parallel set just as fun to collect as the base cards.

Along with the mini parallels there were also black and red back parallels of each card. I am not sure what the insert ratios were for the the red backs were but they are fairly common. As far as I can tell all the cards in the set including SPs and the Joe DiMaggio inserts can be found with both black and red backs. I have not seen any mini cards or jersey cards with red backs though so they may or may not exist.

Another cool thing about the set is the large number of Hall of Fame players in the set. The checklist is ordered by teams so you can fine the legends peppered throughout. You can't complain about a set with Stan the Man, Pops and Yogi.

The one thing that this set does not have in abundance is rookie cards. This was more of a star/legend vehicle and UD wisely decided not to clutter things up with a bunch of prospects. Sure, you miss out on rookies of Ryan Howard, Chien Ming Wang and Hanley Ramirez, but on the other hand there's no Bryan Bullington, Ben Howard or Mike Neu in there either. Upper Deck did manage to sneak in one big name rookie into the very last card of the set, Hidecki Matsui. The set was originally supposed to be only 103 cards, but Godzilla was added as card 104. Yep shenanigans were happening in 2003 as well...

Each box had 24 packs and a pack held five cards. In any given box you could expect 90 base cards, 12 reprint minis, 12 parallel minis, one Ted Williams SP, one Summer of '41 SP and four Joe DiMaggio Streak cards. Every other box had a jersey card, with numbered and autographed variations being much more difficult to find.

Dayf the Blogger has a Posse

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Note on the Blogroll

If you have a blog, and it ain't on here, LET ME KNOW! There are a lot of good blogs I'm missing out on. I'm also very forgetful and sometimes forget to put it on the list even if I do find a good one. If your blog is about cards or trading or sports in general I'll fit it in, but don't try to sneak your blog about politics or cats or crop rotation in the 14th century on here.